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Backup drivers before reinstalling Windows 10 using DISM

Every time you re-install any version of Windows, you need to install drivers. This is not a problem if you have all your drivers downloaded or have disks provided by your hardware vendor. However, some users may not know where the drivers are stored, or for which hardware they exist and which are missing. You may still need to find drivers for every device you have. In Windows 10, you can create a backup of all installed drivers from a working installation of Windows using built-in tools before you re-install the operating system. You can do this without using third party tools. It can be very useful if you lost your downloaded or vendor-supplied drivers. Let's see how it can be done.

In Windows 10, you can use the DISM tool to manage drivers you have installed in the currently running operating system. It is possible to export them to a folder using DISM, then re-install Windows and install them from that folder again. Here are step-by-step instructions to do so.

In the command prompt running as Administrator, type or copy-paste the following command:

dism /online /export-driver /destination:D:\MyDrivers

Replace the "D:\MyDrivers" portion with the actual path to the folder where you will store the drivers. It can be a folder on a separate partition of your disk drive or a folder on an external drive or USB flash drive.

The switches "/online /export-driver" tell DISM to look for drivers in the folder "C:\Windows\System32\DriverStore" of the currently running operating system.

When started, DISM will produce an output like this:

That's it. Now you have a backup of drivers made with the built-in DISM tool! The next time you re-install Windows 10, you will be able to use this backup to install drivers for all your devices.

Later, you can restore them using the following command:

Dism /online /Add-Driver /Driver:D:\MyDrivers /Recurse

Tip: You can inspect installed drivers on an existing Windows installation quickly using the free tool "DriverStore Explorer [RAPR.exe]". You can grab it HERE. It will list all installed drivers with a friendly user interface.

About Sergey Tkachenko

Sergey Tkachenko is a software developer from Russia who started Winaero back in 2011. On this blog, Sergey is writing about everything connected to Microsoft, Windows and popular software. Follow him on Facebook, Twitter or Google+.

DISM /Add-Driver will only work on offline images. Tried out here on a new install of windows. :/ It works only with the Tool DriverStoreExplorer to import all the driver. One .inf by one .. not all by once. >,>

Deployment Image Servicing and Management tool Version: 10.0.14393.0 Image Version: 10.0.14393.0 Error: 50 This command can only be used with an offline image. The DISM log file can be found at C:\WINDOWS\Logs\DISM\dism.log